What is a DAO? The acronym stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. The concept for a DAOis derived from Bitcoin, which might be viewed as the first prototype for a DAO.While there are many technical descriptions of Bitcoin and the excitement it has created, it is perhapsworthwhile to try and capture this excitement in a way that can be understood by those without atechnical background.

Briefly, and non-technically, Bitcoin is the first example of a new form of life. It lives and breathes on theinternet. It lives because it can pay people to keep it alive. It lives because it performs a useful servicethat people will pay it to perform. It lives because anyone, anywhere, can run a copy of its code. It livesbecause all the running copies are constantly talking to each other. It lives because if any one copy iscorrupted it is discarded, quickly and without any fuss or muss. It lives because it is radically transparent:anyone can see its code and see exactly what it does.It can’t be changed. It can’t be argued with. It can’t be tampered with. It can’t be corrupted. It can’t bestopped. It can’t even be interrupted.

If nuclear war destroyed half of our planet, it would continue to live, uncorrupted. It would continue tooffer its services. It would continue to pay people to keep it alive.The only way to shut it down is to kill every server that hosts it. Which is hard, because a lot of servershost it, in a lot of countries, and a lot of people want to use it.Realistically, the only way to kill it is to make the service it offers so useless and obsolete that no onewants to use it. So obsolete that no one wants to pay for it. No one wants to host it. Then it will have nomoney to pay anyone. Then it will starve to death.

But as long as there are people who want to use it, it’s very hard to kill, or corrupt, or stop, or interrupt.The technical community was fascinated with this new life form. Not because of what it could do, or haddone. But because it was a new life form. Suppose you lived on a sterile planet, and all day long youswam in its sterile oceans and watched the waves on its sterile shores. And one day you saw a singletrilobite. And you took it apart. And you realized you could build it. And not only could you buildtrilobites, you could build any of the strange creatures in the Cambrian Explosion. And you dimlyunderstood that there were things beyond the Cambrian Explosion. And you might be able to buildthem, too.

Anyone who wants to create their own new digital life form can do so. Like Bitcoin, it will live on theinternet. Like Bitcoin, it will survive as long as it does something that people will pay for. Like Bitcoin,there will be no way of killing it. Like Bitcoin, it will be radically transparent. Like Bitcoin, it can’t bestopped. Like Bitcoin, it will be able to pay people to do anything people are willing to do in exchange forits cryptocurrency. Unlike Bitcoin, it will follow its own rules, whatever rules were programmed into itwhen it was created.

You could create a currency exchange, or a domain name service, or a prediction market, or a company.You could even create a government